How the Web Supplants Traditional Authority
I recently linked to a NY Mag article on the New York Times, citing it as a nice piece on the Web efforts at the Times. I also posted some questions about a quote by the Times' Aron Pilhofer. Aron noticed the link and in turn posted a question back to me. Thanks Aron for taking the time to do that, and what follows here is my response. Here's my take on why I suggested that the Web "supplants and undermines any notion of 'authority.'"
On the point that the Web undermines authority on the Web, Aron and I are in agreement (based on his comment on this site.) But what is it about the Web that supplants authority?
By supplant, I mean that the Web substitutes one kind of authority for another, that the Web itself is a system of authority, although a different kind of authority. So not only does the Web remove barriers to publishing and communication -- the barriers that others use to make claims of authority -- but the Web also institutes another kind of authority, although I like to think of it as a kinder, gentler authority. This authority is based on consensus among peers. It is relational authority -- many objects pointing to another and confirming the legitimacy and authority of the other.
This authority is clearing typified in Google's PageRank algorithm. I do think, however, that the concept is writ large across the Web in all kinds of ways. Social relationships on the Web are confirmed by the relationships between sites on the Web -- i.e. my personal site points to my Twitter page, my Facebook, etc. The same circle of "friends" show up across various sites. My GPG key has been signed and verified by other people's GPG keys, confirming my identity and creating a trust ring. Using relationships as a structuring principal (and here I mean "relationship" in the most encompassing sense of the word -- personal relationships, link relationships, relational properties of data, etc.) creates a system of authority, one in which a given object is deemed authoritative based on its relationship to other objects.
To take this back to the news industry, which is where this discussion began, something isn't really news on the Web only because it appears on a news site. Something becomes news on the Web because of the ground swell of linking that occurs around something when it becomes popular. And think more than just backlinks from other web pages a la PageRank. Think emails sent to friends, Facebook wall posts, tweets, IRC, and on and on. News isn't news on the Web because it appears on nytimes.com or washingtonpost.com or any other news web site. News is news on the Web when the right places begin pointing to said object and declaring it news.
The only people for whom appearing on a major newspaper's Web site is a prerequisite for being considered news is fellow journalists. And I would argue that even that reinforces the notion that authority is derived from relationships, i.e. this group of people agree that this thing is authoritative as news, which is completely different from previous systems where authority is claimed as divine right or as some function of one's position in society or control of the means of publication.
This is nothing new, really. Oral tradition gave way to the written word. The written word gave way to the printed page. The printed page gave way to the computer screen. And now here we are. Just the way mass-produced Bibles in the vernacular killed the hand-written priestly Bible's claim to authority so the Web kills the printing press's claim. The shift in authority from page to pixel is much the same as the shift from a priestly class to a publishing class. So if we're going to reinvent ourselves in this age, let's don't stake our claim on trying to transition old models to a digital age. Let's fully embrace the age for what it is, new system of authority and all that such a thing means.
Pop-culture Bibles FTW!
Link | Posted by deryck on January 29, 2009 | 2 comments
